


Trinity Remixed

by tielan



Category: Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three superheroes in another history...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lois Lane

Tonight had been a perfectly good charity ball until the bandits interrupted it.

In the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, the guests mingled amidst the opulence of chandeliers and fine food, famous faces and beautiful piano music.

“I’m amazed that they got Tia Taijie in to play,” Lois Lane muttered at her partner for the evening as she juggled purse and champagne glass. “I heard she was booked out until the New Year. Ms. Prinze must have pulled no end of strings to get her here tonight.”

“Ms. Prinze seems to have a lot of strings to pull,” came the sardonic reply. “As would anyone with the money and power she wields.”

Having worked out how she could hold both purse and champagne glass and still have a hand free to take up the dainty pastries being circulated through the room, Lois gave her companion a sharply slanting look from beneath dark lashes. “As if you can talk about money and power, Bruce!”

“Are you referring to Wayne Enterprises?”

“Actually,” she said smoothly, “I’m referring to your franchise of go-go clubs running from New York to New Orleans!” Lois rolled her eyes. “What else would I be referring to?”

He shrugged and didn’t answer.

Lois scowled. “You’re a very powerful man, Bruce, simply through your controlling interest in Wayne Enterprises.”

“I don’t use it for anything,” he murmured, and nodded briefly at a couple he recognised - some of Gotham’s more prestigious society. They eyed Lois, who smiled and nodded and gritted her teeth against the same old rumours that inevitably resurfaced after one of her appearances on the arm of Bruce Wayne.

“That,” she said in a conversational tone, “is the most outrageous lie I have ever heard anyone utter with a straight face.”

One corner of the full mouth quirked slightly in sardonic amusement. “Well, maybe just a little.”

They passed a group talking about a recent snatch-and-grab attempt from a museum in Gotham. “...nothing taken. The thieves were found handcuffed to one of the exits, babbling about the guy who stopped the heist.”

“Was it that Crusader fellow?”

“Apparently. The description matches...”

The voices faded as they moved past the speakers and across the room. Lois frowned a little. “What do you make of that?”

“Hmm?” Bruce had vagued out again. “Oh, the Crusader guy.” He shrugged. “Seems to be doing a decent job cleaning up Gotham. Well,” he corrected wryly, “as much as Gotham can be cleaned up.”

“Such faith in your fair city,” Lois murmured as they approached a couple they knew. “You’re a cynic, Bruce.”

“You wound me, Lois. And if I’m a cynic, what are you?” He regarded her archly.

“A realist,” she muttered, _sotto voce_ the moment before they reached the couple. When he shot her a slightly irritated look, she smiled sweetly at him. She loved annoying him. It was one of the best things about these fundraising evenings: the chance to needle Bruce where he had to put on a polite face for Gotham’s fine society.

The couple they had stopped to talk with were vaguely familiar to Lois, who usually had very little to do with such fundraising activities. Socialising and smoothing things over was Bruce’s area of expertise - he was a master at the fine art of calming nerves and soothing emotions.

It was more Lois’ nature to ruffle things up and make things uncomfortable. And she did it well. As a reporter for the Gotham Daily, she even got paid for it - with sometimes entertaining results. Oh, there were no Pulitzers on the horizon yet, although she had a story in mind that might give her a shot at the Holy Grail of her writing. If she could only get the subject to participate!

She wasn’t fully paying attention to the conversation. Instead, she was absently noting who was present, who was speaking to whom and whom she had to collar before the night was out. These were Gotham’s wealthiest and finest citizens, the bejewelled denizens of the city’s highest social strata. They were also the CEOs and businessmen of some of the biggest companies based on the east coast. Where there was big business, there was also big news, and where there was big news to be found, Lois was the one looking into it.

Lois was always on the job, even when she was saving Bruce from the hordes of slavering Gotham socialites, most of whom were yearning for the chance to get the glasses off Dr. Wayne and find out if the doctor’s hands really _were_ as skilled as rumour had it.

Judging from the prickling of her nape, there were several women here who were glaring at her with gazes that should have been able to punch through raw steel. Lois grinned at a joke made by the gentleman as Bruce made a cunning reply and entered the conversation in the break after the laughter died.

“There are so many people here tonight.” There. She had contributed to the perpetuation of the conversation, however insipid her offering. Bruce arched a brow at her and she returned him a smooth smile.

“There are far more people here than we expected!” The woman looked around the room, evidently pleased with the turnout. “I wonder if they got wind of--” She broke off and glanced briefly at Lois and Bruce, then around the room before she leaned over and lowered her voice. “Lady Diana sent an invite to Superman.”

Lois blinked. That took some guts to do. Superman, while well known and much admired, was not usually a guest at these events. “I thought he tended to avoid charity functions because of the paparazzi.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Bruce asked Lois dryly.

“You’re asking the wrong person, Bruce,” she replied with asperity, ignoring the slight churning feeling in her stomach at the thought of Superman coming here, tonight. “The only reporters who ever hounded me were the ones who wanted _me_ to comment on something _you_ did because they thought I’d have an inside angle!”

Never mind that she knew very little of the things Bruce did that made the media. As far as some of the more stupid gossip columnists were concerned, her proximity to Bruce Wayne meant she should know _everything_ about what he did in his business and his practise, to say nothing of his personal habits.

“It’s always my fault,” Bruce said, adopting the air of a beleaguered man.

“Most of the time, it is,” Lois replied and saw his eyes twinkle with amusement at her sharpness and changed the topic before he could get his own retort in. “So, do you know if Superman will come?” She knew that Bruce gave her a hard look and ignored it.

“He told Ms. Prinze ‘yes,’” the man said. “And the donations started pouring in! Our original goal was only fifty thousand dollars, but we’re already nearly there, so Ms. Prinze suggested we raise the bar to one hundred thousand.”

“And she promised to match every dollar raised with fifty cents of her own,” his wife added.

“A very generous offering,” Bruce observed, and cocked a sly smile at Lois. “I might have to consider giving Ms. Prinze a run for her money.”

Lois fought the urge to groan. When Bruce’s competitive instincts came out, it was best to stand back. In that, he was a lot like her, but where his background was money and privilege, hers was a middle-class upbringing. She opened her mouth to say something sharp and teasing, but was interrupted by a voice as suave and sleek as velvet.

“Please do, Dr. Wayne,” Lady Diana Prinze said as she swiped a glass of champagne from a passing waiter with a brief smile for the man. Lois noted the tide of scarlet that rose up over the white collar of the waiter’s shirt, infusing his neck with a rosy glow. The Lady continued smoothly, unaware of the havoc she’d caused with her smile. “It would be lovely to have some competition.”

 _As if anyone could compete against you,_ Lois thought, somewhat uncharitably. If ever one person had been given an excess of gifts and talents, it would have to be the Lady Diana Prinze. Apart from the obvious blessings of beauty, status, and wealth, she was formidably intelligent, very personable, and quite charming.

Tonight, she was charming in a deep blue dress that brought out the colour of her eyes - the intense blue of a Mediterranean sky - and wearing a collar of sapphires set in silver. Lois felt positively dowdy beside her - and this gown was the nicest one she owned.

“As if anyone could compete against you,” said the charity director, echoing Lois’ thoughts with overdone gallantry.

“It’s lovely of you to say so,” Ms. Prinze commented. “Although quite untrue.” She stated it matter-of-factly, sparing neither her modesty nor her admirer’s. Her eyes rested on Bruce with a mischievous twinkle in them. “Dr. Wayne is well capable of competing against me in the donation stakes. And doubtless many other stakes as well. I hear the Wayne Enterprises research on stem cells is nearing its completion, Dr. Wayne?”

Bruce shifted. If he was surprised that a socialite knew of the status of his most recent research project, he evinced no surprise. “We’ve reached the goals we set out to achieve, Ms. Prinze,” he said simply. Give him a chance and he would warm to this topic, but for the moment, he was diffident. “We’re looking into an extension, but our backers are not as willing to support further research in this area. We’ll bring them around.”

Ms. Prinze’s gaze flickered to Lois for a moment, arching one delicate brow, and Lois rolled her eyes and grinned. “He means _he’ll_ bring them around,” she said.

“I have no doubt he will,” the other woman said with a sultry look at Bruce.

Lois was honest enough to admit that she was relieved the socialite had at least one weak spot. All manner of handsome men could be found in her company, and God knew, Bruce was handsome enough to drive any woman to distraction. Or obsession.

Did it say something about Lois that the distraction he drove her to was not the kind most people thought was between them? Probably. She’d learned not to care about the gossip many years ago. The death threats were another matter, but she had learned a thing or a dozen through her years of knowing Bruce and wasn’t afraid to use them where necessary.

“I’m not sure if you’re complimenting me or mocking me, Ms. Prinze,” Bruce said lightly, but with a very direct look. If he was aware of the socialite’s interest, he was no less polite, trusting in her good manners to ensure that no lines were crossed.

“You need to ask?” Dark lashes fluttered teasingly.

“I’m afraid to,” came the retort.

The casual ‘salute’ she gave him was both respectful and mocking, and she turned to Lois, about to make a comment when her eyes widened as she saw someone over Lois’ shoulder. “Oh, he’s here! Please excuse me!”

A moment later Ms. Prinze was holding out her hand to the man who had paused at the edge of the balcony doors. A moment later, Lois had turned on her heel, drawn to his magnetic north like sensitised steel.

“Oh, my God,” said the director’s wife faintly, unable to take her eyes from the man who was bowing over Ms. Prinze’s hand with an elegance that would have done a prince proud. “I can’t believe he came!”

“I don’t think many people thought he would,” the director was saying.

“ _I_ didn’t think he would,” Bruce murmured dryly.

Lois barely heard them. She was watching Superman.

She’d only met him a couple of times, but each time had been...breathtaking. A part of her felt ashamed of admiring him so intensely - from what she’d heard, he had quite a fan club - and, indeed, the response to him could be seen all around the room.

Women were staring, blatant envy in their eyes as they watched Ms. Prinze smile and laugh and flirt with their latest guest. The guest himself seemed inclined to an easy friendliness towards his hostess, chatting in a personable manner. Rumour had it, he’d been brought up on an island of warriors - some unheard of, uncharted island in the Bermuda Triangle - although how anything could be uncharted in this day and age was a mystery to Lois.

And Ms. Prinze was bringing him over to their small group.

Her fingers twitched with the urge to run her fingers through her hair and make sure she looked properly groomed. Lois forced the urge away. She was _not_ going to primp and simper like some stupid society bimbo just because a handsome man looked her way.

Beside her, she felt Bruce lean across her slightly to murmur, “Good girl.”

She bristled at him, causing him to take a step back and bring his hands up in wry defence against her.

“...must meet a few people, Superman.”

“Please,” he said in a light, clear tenor. “Call me Kal El.”

Lois felt uncharitably jealous of the society belle. It seemed that even legendary superheroes had their Achilles’ heel, but how sad to find that Superman’s was the smile of a beautiful woman. Still, she viciously kicked her brain into gear as Ms. Prinze introduced him to the director and his wife and took the moment to study him.

He seemed as neatly groomed as always, but not urbane, the way Bruce managed to look. There was a simplicity about him that Bruce would never have in a million years. It wasn’t quite innocence, more of an uncomplicated ease that would avoid making things more difficult than they needed to be.

Usually clad in a very colourful costume of blue and red, tonight, he was dressed for a formal evening. The suit looked expensive, and familiarity with Bruce’s dress habits forced Lois to admit that it probably _was_ expensive. It would have been tailor-made to fit perfectly across broad shoulders and deep chest, giving him an air of calm formality. Or maybe that was just his manner, the air of royalty that clung to him like the sound of trumpets heralding his presence.

Frankly, Lois didn’t care. Recognition was dawning on his face as Ms. Prinze began the introductions, and he interrupted the woman with the start of a smile for his rudeness before turning the full force of that easy, honest pleasure on Lois.

“Miss Lane, I believe?” Superman said, taking her hand and covering it with one of his own. “We meet again.”

The touch of his hand sent tingles up her arm and down her spine. The room might as well have been empty but for him and her - she certainly didn’t have the faintest idea if Bruce was laughing at her behind her back - although he probably was. If so, she didn’t care. She was talking to Superman. And he remembered her name!

“Under less dramatic circumstances than the last time,” Lois said. A part of her that wasn’t dizzy over his attention was screaming at her. She suspected it was trying to tell her not to look like a simpering idiot. She had an awful feeling it was failing.

“You know of my colleague, don’t you? Dr. Bruce Wayne?”

Superman turned his gaze towards Bruce and inclined his head. “I’ve heard of Dr. Wayne by reputation only, I’m afraid,” he said. “Although the reports are one and all excellent. You’re doing good work, both in that clinic of yours and at Wayne Enterprises.”

“You’re very kind, Superman,” Bruce replied, “if mistaken. I have little to do with Wayne Enterprises.”

“The name would suggest otherwise,” Ms. Prinze murmured, just loud enough for both men to hear.

Lois barely held back a giggle at the woman’s gentle dig at Bruce’s modesty. Superman gave both women a hard look but only said, “As Ms. Prinze has indicated, your part in keeping Wayne Enterprises an open corporation is not exactly a secret. And has earned you the enmity of Lex Luthor.”

She _felt_ Bruce tense, for all that her hand was still firmly in Superman’s, and barely held back a flinch herself. Still, for all that, Bruce’s answer was easy.

“It doesn’t take a lot to earn Luthor’s enmity,” he said. “All you have to do is show him up a couple of times and he’ll hate you for life.” He grinned, a touch of the devil in his smile. “I can show you if you like.”

Superman stared for a moment, before he seemed to realise it was a joke and grinned back.

A moment later, the world splintered and shattered around their ears.


	2. Crusader

Luthor aside, Bruce had been more than ready to corner the Man of Steel in an attempt to acquire the opportunity to study the unusual physiology of the Kryptonian.

Then the windows crashed inward under the weight and force of armoured men.

Even as people screamed and fled, Bruce had pressed a button on his wristwatch that sent a tiny signal to Alfred, down in the limousine. If he could find an exit, he could turn into Crusader in less than a minute.

He didn’t have even a minute.

There were guns trained on the now-panicked crowds. Guns, but no bullets - not yet.

In the meantime, there _was_ a moving blur of black tuxedo and white shirt that had already take care of two of the men, impervious to the bullets that bounced off his skin.

Bruce had to admit, it was a very dramatic save on Superman’s part.

But even more dramatic was the move the theives took to stop him.

Bruce saw the side of the muzzle of the gun swinging towards him, and allowed it to knock him backwards. A certain clumsiness acted in his favour as a disguise. Disguise was good.

The gun muzzles that now pointed at Lois and Ms. Prinze were not.

“Hey, Superman!” The bandit yelled, his voice hard and cold. “Are your girlfriends bulletproof?”

As threats went, it was a highly effective one.

Superman froze, the strong muscles of his neck and throat standing out as he willed himself to stillness for the sake of the bystanders. Sprawled inelegantly on the floor, at one level, Bruce was impressed with the ingenuity of the men. On the other hand, that ingenuity had neutralised their biggest threat, which was not quite as impressive - from Bruce’s point of view, anyway.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” spoke one of the men. “We hope you’ve been having a lovely night!”

He seemed standard for most of the intruders, dressed in green army-like fatigues with a flak jacket, balaclava, and a semi-automatic weapon - one of the older AK-47s. Bruce noted the spare sidearms that several of the men wore, and briefly wondered if he could reach one, then abandoned the thought of heroics as long as they had so many men and so many hostages.

The spokesperson continued, dry irony in his voice as he added to his greeting. “We’re going to make this simple for you rich, fancy folks. Hand over your jewels and valubles and you won’t get hurt!”

With a sigh, Ms Prinze collapsed on the floor.

Bruce barely managed to catch her before she hit her head. He lunged up from the floor and promptly found himself with an armful of fainted socialite.

Due to his training, his mind tended to remember fragments of scenes in peculiar montages. His senses would later pull up the memory of her scent, the feel of her skin, and the colour of her dress. _Jasmine, velvet, royal blue..._ His senses would also recall the calibre of the guns, the limp of the leader, the military gait of several of the men. Coolly, his mind catalogued all this information away. There was significant organisation behind tonight, this hadn’t been planned this afternoon.

Lois was pale and worried, but not unduly frightened as the men stripped her of her jewellery and purse, tossing them into a sack each man pulled from beneath his flak jacket. The gun held against her head kept Superman tense but quiescent.

But at this moment, all that came secondary.

The first thought in his mind was that Ms. Prinze wasn’t breathing.

There was an order to the world. Bruce felt it in his bones. He’d become a doctor in honour of his father’s life. He’d become a vigilante in search of justice for his father’s death. The two were a balance that he’d struggled with all his life.

He wasn’t so sure he’d found it, even now.

Crusader should be in here, showing these men who owned this city, who claimed it - protected it.

Dr. Bruce Wayne only knew that there was a woman here who needed his medical expertise.

The doctor won. _Thieves can be tracked down, but dead is dead._ Not much of a choice at all.

Frantically, Bruce checked for a pulse and sighed in relief as he found it. At least he wouldn’t have to initiate CPR. His jacket was yanked off with more speed than skill to give him greater freedom of movement. A handgun was cocked at his head and he could feel the tension in the trigger-finger, mere millimetres from splattering his brains out across the white-gold rug.

“What are you doing?”

Another man might have frozen. Bruce did not. “She’s not breathing,” he said, checking her mouth without looking up at the man who held the weapon on him. “I’m a doctor, I’m helping. You’re already up for theft and endangerment. Do you really want to add murder to your rap sheet?”

There was a silence from the man, and Bruce brushed a finger across the fine plane of the cheek and checked her pulse again. Still strong, but her chest wasn’t moving.

She wasn’t breathing.

“Get his wallet off him!” Someone else yelled. “Don’t worry about the bitch!”

He pointed at the discarded jacket without looking away from his patient. “Wallet’s in there.” Not that he carried much to these events. Chequebook. ID. Credit card. The rest was left with Alfred down in the limo. Unnecessary.

Vaguely, he was aware of a chance in the tension of the room. Then there was the sound of steady gunfire and renewed screams. A moment later Lois flung herself down to the floor beside him, “Is she okay?”

Bruce hardly noticed.

His eyes were on her face, on the rich beauty so still and unmoving, and he tilted her head back and began resuscitation techniques. _Breathe, count four, breathe, count four, breathe count four..._

She wasn’t breathing.

Beyond him, there were cries and the sounds of fists hitting flesh. A woman’s voice rang through the room above his head, cool, commanding tones that bordered on the familiar - if his mind could only stop long enough process it. He stored the familiarity for a time when he wasn’t attending to his patient and cataloguing other tiny bits and pieces about the situation.

A moment later, a second pair of fists joined the fray, and he could hear the alarm and panic through the room - as well as the subtle shift of dynamics. The intruders were on the defensive now, taken by surprise.

But she wasn’t breathing.

 _Damn you, woman,_ he thought angrily as he continued resuscitation. _Breathe!_

He could keep this up for only a little longer, then someone else would have to take over. In the meantime, she wasn’t getting as much oxygen as her brain usually needed. Oh, there’d be enough to keep her alive, but not much else.

She wasn’t breathing.

In the background, he could hear Lois gabbling into a cellphone - she’d had the presence of mind to call the ambulance. Alfred would have sent an alarm to the Gotham City Police the instant he received the signal from Bruce.

That was the way things usually worked in Gotham. Crusader took care of the problem, and the GCPD got the criminal they wanted.

The GCPD would be on their way by now, but Ms. Prinze needed an ambulance.

In the meantime, she had Bruce working over her.

And the stupid woman _still wasn’t breathing_!

“The ambulance is on their way.” Lois glanced up, “And the police have just arrived...”

The sounds of fighting had stopped. There was no gunfire. Superman was speaking to someone. The GCPD had arrived on the scene.

Ms. Prinze wasn’t breathing.

“Injuries?” Bruce didn’t look up from the socialite. Even unconscious, the woman was exquisitely beautiful. Now if she’d only be exquisitely beautiful _and breathing_!

“One man is dead,” she said, pale and tight. Lois wasn’t the fainting-flower type. “A couple of bruises where people got smacked around when they resisted the gunmen taking their stuff. A bullet wound, but Hank O’Malley is on him.”

Hank was a good doctor. One less thing for Bruce to worry about anyway.

“Superman?” He was surprised she hadn’t yet said anything about Superman. Lois, for all her aspirations to being a modern, independent woman, had fallen for the Kryptonian from day one.

“Imprisoning the last of the thieves with Lady Night.”

 _That_ startled him as few things did. Bruce paused in his resuscitation and looked up, startled. “Lady Night?” Abruptly he recalled himself and returned his attention to Diana.

“She arrived after Ms. Prinze fainted,” Lois said. “They’re...”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Bruce barely looked up at Superman’s request, mentally counting to another four as he said. “If you can get her to a hospital in the next thirty seconds, then, yes.” He bent to breathe into her again.

And this time, as his lips lifted from hers, she moved under him, trying to inhale and exhale all at once. The result wasn’t pretty. She choked as her reflexes demanded she drag air into her lungs and yet expel whatever it was had gotten caught in her throat.

Still, there was no way to describe the relief Bruce felt as he sat back on his haunches and began waving people away. It rushed through his veins, as intoxicating as any drug, as triumphal as any primal cry. He had fought death and pushed it back for one more day.

A fight worth fighting for.

Now, he’d have a harder battle on his hands: crowd control and giving a socialite advice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, step back. Give her air to breathe.” He watched the blue eyes open, and had a reassuring hand on her shoulder as she sat up coughing and wheezing. “It’s okay, Ms. Prinze. Everything’s fine.” Charity Director Kennedy was still hovering anxiously so Bruce addressed him, polite, but firm. “Would you get Ms. Prinze a glass of water?”

It was one way to make the man stop hovering.

She coughed a few moments more, sounding oddly forced, before she drew in a long, steady breath and exhaled clearly. “Are they gone?”

Bruce kept his hand on her shoulder. “Yes,” he said, with an authority he didn’t have.

Technically, he didn’t know that the bandits were gone, but he trusted Superman and Lady Night. If those two were cleaning up, they’d have done a fairly thorough job.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have a talk with them both about jurisdiction and his city. Never mind that he hadn’t been able to stop these thieves, they should have known better. Besides, Crusader had a reputation to keep in Gotham and among his team-mates of the League. “They’re gone.” As she sat up, he put on his best ‘authoritative doctor’ voice. “Take it easy there. You stopped breathing for several minutes.”

One black-gloved hand waved him away, but she accepted the glass of water with a smile for the director before she looked back at Bruce. “Don’t fuss, Dr. Wayne,” she said lightly. “I’m fine. Just a fainting spell, nothing to be worried about.”

“A fainting spell during which you stopped breathing,” Bruce said, careful to rein in his irritation.

She’d taken a gulp of water while he spoke, her eyes fixed on his face in a very disconcerting manner. It gave the impression she was listening very hard to his words, though Bruce considered it highly unlikely that she’d pay heed to anything he said.

He was right.

“Dr. Wayne,” she said, in a coaxing voice that made him want to gnash his teeth, “it should be quite obvious that, unconscious or not-breathing, I’m fine. Better than fine, in fact.”

“You should listen to your doctor, Diana,” Superman said, looking away from where he’d been speaking with Lois.

 _Oh, so it’s ‘Diana’ is it?_ Not that the intervention did all that much. She only came back with the retort: “Sadly, he’s not _my_ doctor, Superman.” The arch look that accompanied such sentiments was aimed squarely at Bruce, and he ignored the brief syncopated thud of his heart. He was a single man, not a dead one.

“If I was your doctor, you _would_ be obeying my directions,” Bruce said somewhat dryly. He was well aware that he was playing into her hands with his comment, but sometimes that was the easiest way to deal with a woman.

Lois didn’t quite sigh, but he could see the roll of her eyes from where she stood as Ms. Prinze answered, “So I guess you like being in control, hmm?” The gleam in the socialite’s eyes was positively wicked as she regarded him, and he flushed. His complexion was beyond his control, even if he had a sharp rein on his thoughts a moment later.

He didn’t bother to hide the flush. It would add to his image of a woman-oblivious work-obsessed doctor. “Ms. Prinze,” he said with the manner of someone trying to keep a derailed topic on the straight-and-narrow, “When the paramedics arrive, I’d like you to go with them. You should have a couple of tests performed, just to be sure that everything is fine...”

“Oh, that shouldn’t be necessary, surely?”

“I’d strongly advise it...”

“But I don’t have to if I don’t want to, do I?”

She certainly had her cajoling down pat. Bruce sighed. “No, you don’t have to, but Ms. Prinze, you were unconscious for...”

“Thank you,” she said, and now there was the hint of stubbornness in her voice. “But no. I’m quite fine, Dr. Wayne, I assure you. No more help needed.” Then she smiled a little. “Unless you’re going to be helping me up from the floor.”

Bruce recognised a lost cause when he saw one. Not so Superman.

“Ms. Prinze, I don’t think you should be dismissing Dr. Wayne’s opinions so lightly.”

“Oh, Superman,” she said with a laugh as the Man of Steel helped her back onto her feet, “Dr. Wayne has my utmost respect as a practitioner of medicine, but I feel fine.” Her hand rested on the muscled bicep for balance a few moments longer than necessary, and Bruce bit back the surge of irritation that washed over him at the woman’s careless dismissal of her situation. Several minutes with minimal oxygen to the brain was nothing to sniff at.

Still, he wasn’t so rank an innocent as to show such irritation on his face. To the rest of the world, his expression was rueful and exasperated as Lois hauled him to his feet. “You’re okay?” He asked her with a quick glance over her to confirm it for himself, even as he also took in the rest of the room in his peripheral vision.

A dozen bodies lay prone on the floor, most being hauled up and handcuffed even as he watched.

The GCPD were giving the matter their full attention - not that they had much choice with Gotham’s wealthiest and most powerful in the room.

Superman went to speak with them, excusing himself, and escorting Ms. Prinze over so she could give the detectives a bit of information about the guests - or just so she could break a few more hearts.

Bruce was feeling quite disgruntled after having his medical opinion so summarily dismissed.

A glance around the room showed most guests had found chairs. Not a few were looking very distressed. Those were most usually surrounded by friends and acquaintances who were saying things in soothing tones. One sensible servitor had found a tray of champagne and was passing it around to steady the nerves of any guests who felt they needed something to drink.

Personally, Bruce felt that a double whiskey on the rocks would have been more than welcome.

A man had died in the theft attempt. His tablecloth-covered body lay in a spreading stain of scarlet. Across the room, the dead man’s wife was sitting in a chair having hysterics as another woman held her hands and spoke to her. Bruce’s hearing didn’t reach that far, but judging from what he could read of her lips, she had already begun counselling the bereaved woman.

He saw Hank O’Malley, kneeling down beside a man, glancing around in assessment of the situation. Their eyes met and meshed, and Hank gave him a quick nod to show that things were under control for the moment.

Bruce turned his attention back to Lois, who was answering the question he’d first asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, more irritated than scared. “I handed over my stuff, nice and polite and they promptly ignored me. Other than the shock of having a gun stuck to my head...” She heaved a deep sigh, looking out across the floor where the Gotham Police Department had arrived and were taking charge of the situation.

“What did they take?” Bruce asked.

“Mostly personal stuff,” she told him. “Purses, wallets, jewellery. They were halfway through when Lady Night appeared.” Lois shook her head. “One minute, there was nothing, the next, she’d slipped out of the shadows and was in the middle of it all. She got four of them down before they realised what was going on. Then Superman joined her, and between them they got most of them.”

“Most? Some escaped?” Bruce arched a brow. Something in him was pleased. Tracking them down would be Crusader’s task later tonight.

After he had a word with Superman and Lady Night. They’d done good work, but Crusader did have a reputation to keep. And Gotham was _his_ city, after all.

“Only a handful.” The pretty bow lips twisted in sudden frustration. “But the ones that did took my Palm Pilot! I had my notes for tomorrow’s articles all written up on it!”

In spite of everything that had happened tonight, Bruce found himself with the urge to throw back his head and laugh. Lois was incorrigible. He took her elbow and gently steered her towards the tables where enterprising waiters were pouring glasses of alcohol as fast as they could.

Across the function room, Ms. Prinze was charming Commissioner Gordon with that smile.

“I could do with a drink,” Bruce said. “I think we’re going to be here a while.”

He could wait an hour or two before starting on the hunt for these men. They hadn’t been mere thieves, that was for sure - there was too much organisation here, even for one of the gangster groups that Gotham bred like rabbits.

Organisation left papertrails, and papertrails led to criminals.

And when Crusader found the criminals...

Well, that was for later.


	3. Kal-El

Kal El soared through Gotham’s cloudy skies, high above the seamy streets of the grubby city.

He was in trouble, and he knew it. His presence here was adding insult to injury, salt in the wound.

However, he felt he owed Crusader an explanation - however unlikely it was that the man would take it.

The wind caressed his face, throat and hands as he flew past the mix of old-time Gothic architecture from which the city had taken its name, and the shiny blue-silver surfaces of the modern skyscrapers that made up the skyline of every American city.

And there, on the Civic Centre, was the cape-clad figure he was expecting to see, standing at the edge of the skyscraper, heedless of the fall below.

The figure was small, but growing rapidly larger as Kal approached. To most eyes, he would have been hardly visible, the dark blues of cape and costume blending well into the shadows of the city. Kal’s sharp eyes could pick out the line of head and shoulders, the familiar stance, and the watchful awareness that had seen Kal’s coming probably before Kal had seen Crusader.

Kal touched down on the ledge beside his team-mate.

“I thought I asked you to stay out of my city.” Not pleasantries, no niceties, Crusader went straight to the heart of the matter like a surgeon making an incision for an operation.

Kal regarded the city, laid out below them, not looking at his blunt-spoken team-mate. He had learned not to mind Crusader’s curt speech. It was a refreshing change from the polite words too often used by people in the Outside World to conceal other motives. He’d learned to be wary of smooth politeness.

“I was invited to the charity ball, Crusader,” he said. “I was there as a legitimate guest when the men interrupted the night.”

His ire rose, not at Crusader, but at the memory of the guns pointed at Ms. Lane and Ms. Prinze’s head. He’d been unwilling to take the risk that he could disable them all before one of them got off a shot.

On the other hand, Lady Night had not seemed to give much thought to the safety of the bystanders. Her appearance out of the shadows had been as much surprise to Kal as it had been to the bandits. However, once they opened fire on her, Kal had taken the opportunity offered by her presence and the chaos it engendered.

“And the Lady?” Crusader inquired acidly. “Was she also a guest at the ball?”

“I was...in the area,” said a new voice, rising from the empty air before the two men. She was borne on the back of winds unseen, the ebony of her outfit clinging to every curve of her slender figure. The darkness of her form sucked at the ambient light around her, to their eyes, she was a negative image against the background of the building across the street. Masked and costumed from throat to toe in black, with a sparkle of stars running from just over her heart to her right shoulder.

“You were nowhere in sight,” continued the Lady, “and Superman was held from action due to his...affections for one of the ladies in question.”

Kal felt his cheeks colour. He had not thought anyone noticed his appreciation of Ms. Lane, although given who his team-mates were; he supposed he should have known better.

“You have no shame, Lady,” he chided, but with a smile on his face. Where Crusader was blunt and not given to many words, the Lady displayed a darkling sense of humour that manifested itself most plainly in her retorts and teasing of her team-mates.

“Indeed,” Crusader said. His flat, hard tones were sufficient to deter most of their team-mates when they pressed too hard about the matters he wished to keep his own. “This _is_ my city. I’ll thank you to stay out of it.”

“And if I’d stayed out of it tonight, more of your citizens would lie in the morgue, cold rotting flesh for wormfood.” There was a clear challenge in her voice, but Crusader was untouched by it.

“I’m very much aware of that,” he continued, his cloak flapping about him in the endless wind that whistled through the streets of Gotham. “However, the sentiment remains,” he turned to look at Kal, “for both of you. Tonight was an aberration - don’t intrude on what is mine.”

And with that, he leaped from the roof, casting out a line before him to swing through the air. In less than a minute, he was the merest speck along the line of Gotham skyscrapers. Conversation ended. As far as Crusader was concerned, Gotham was his city; he expected others to stay out of it, and there was nothing more to be said on the matter.

The Lady laughed, a rich, dark amusement that flowed from her like a river. Whoever she was, she was exquisite, all sleek moves and coiled dark hair, and a deadly sense of humour. “Do we follow him?”

“He would not thank us for it.”

“Is there anything for which he _does_ thank us?” She inquired, and the warm accents of her voice slid warmly down his spine.

Kal grinned, “I cannot think of it.”

“Then it makes little differ whether or not he thanks us,” the Lady dismissed.

In all this time, her feet had not touched solid ground; she was as at home in the air as she was on the ground, and Kal could not help but wonder who this woman was that she had such power and grace.

His own skills he knew well; his people had lived in silence and shadow from the World Outside for over two thousand years - a race of legend and myth, even in the time of the Greek Empire. Before that, they had been through the world but a little, and their presence, their magic; their powers lived on in the legends of the city of Atlantis.

Forewarned of its destruction, a small group of their race had fled to another land, no more than a hundred men, women, and children to keep alive the legends of the Kryptonian race.

But no Kryptonian had left their island for over five hundred years, not until Kal El, son of Jor El, felt something drawing him to the World Outside as the Imperiex attacked from space. He had left the island against his father’s wishes, had come to fight against the invaders who threatened the world that was his own, had taken on the responsibility of the World Outside with his actions, according to the law of the Kryptonians.

Kal had fallen in with men and women whose physical strengths were inferior to his, but whose spirit and passion he would never dare underestimate. Of all his fellows, Lady Night was the only one with comparable strength or speed to Kal’s own, the only one who challenged him in body, but the others each had their strengths and skills, specific to the need as it arose.

Even now, she hovered in the air, her head tilted off in the direction where Crusader had vanished. “Do you hear gunfire, or is that only my imagination?”

It wasn’t her imagination. Kal could hear the chatter of bullets as well.

She was off down the street in a moment, leaving only the fading trail of her voice. “Last one there has to apologise to him!”

Kal flew after her, arrowing through the air with a faint smile on his face. Fast as he was, she would reach the fray before him, simply because he was not minded to fly at a speed that would leave the city behind him in disarray.

A single glance at the fight told Kal all he needed to know.

The clothing was the same, even down to the balaclavas and the weapons. These men had robbed the charity earlier tonight. They had threatened two helpless women rather than face him, using the innocent to further their base ends. They were criminals to be stopped.

All this rushed through his mind, faster than the speed of light, and then he was in there, laying about him without mercy.

Crusader was in the thick of the fight, of course. Fists, feet, and the weapons he wielded - tiny throwing crosses that bit deeply into flesh, sharp-ended bolas that spun from agile fingers and pricked human flesh, and the cables and grapples that formed Crusader’s ability to ‘fly’.

For a ‘mere human’, Crusader was far less human than even some ‘non-humans’ Kal had known. Everything was a weapon in the eyes of his team-mate, and every motion had a reason and a purpose, there was no energy wasted in anything he did.

Beside such choreographed elegance, there were moments where Superman felt distinctly crude. His strengths were fists and force - along with a certain immunity to bullets. Still, fists and force had their purposes - as more than a few of the men felt.

He was dispatching a fifth man, when it occurred to him that he’d as yet seen no sign of the Lady.

A moment later, as if his thoughts had summoned her, a man behind Kal’s opponent was jerked off his feet into the air, clawing at the silvery loop that appeared around his neck and hauled him into the air. The end of the lariat rested firmly in the black-gloved hand of the woman who stood on nothing at all.

“No killing!” The command rang out from Crusader, and even as Kal tossed his opponent into the next, he heard the Lady sigh.

“As you wish, highness.” Her mockery bit as sharply as the lash of her lasso, and the strangled man dropped a full eight feet to the ground. Injurious, but not fatal. A moment later, he curled up in agony as the Lady landed directly on his groin. Dark heels ground inelegantly into his crotch, eliciting a scream of pain, before she launched back into the air, and lashed out with the silver lasso again.

In the might, distant sirens wailed. “Did you have any particular plan for this engagement, Crusader?” The Lady inquired as her boot swung at another man with an accuracy that ached in even Kal’s jaw. “Or were we simply going to beat them to a pulp?”

“Did you hear the part about ‘no killing’, Lady?”

Another man was poleaxed with a roundhouse fist to the jaw. “I have yet killed none. Superman?”

“None.” It was not his mission to destroy or kill, although he would do both if he perceived the need for it.

His team-mate, however, preferred to disable his enemies rather than kill them. The ethics were both admirable and deplorable in Superman’s eyes: some evils should not be permitted to live on. And yet this was not his city and so he played by Crusader’s rules. Mostly.

Crusader was facing the last two men as the Lady dropped to the ground beside Kal. A small four-pointed cross spun through the air, shooting out weighted lines that curved around the first man’s waist and swung in on him, tangling him up in the strong wire, pinning his arms to his side. The second had his feet neatly swept out from under him, and he was flat on his back with one booted toe at his throat before he could do more than gurgle.

Kal waited to see what the other man would do with these. The police were not far away, but it seemed that Crusader had more specific questions than those of robbery and theft.

“Who hired you?” The deep, gravelly voice demanded, lethally soft in the night.

At first, the man was reluctant to answer. He changed his tone with a desperate gurgle as Crusader gently dug his toe into the throat, and repeated his question. “Who hired you?”

“And he wanted _me_ to go easy on the goods,” murmured the Lady ironically, still watching from the air.

The man gasped something, a string of syllables that had little meaning for Superman, but which evidently meant something decipherable to Crusader, for he nodded. “You were provided with all the equipment?” An assent met that question. “And what did he get out of it?”

Movement at the corner of Kal’s eye distracted him from the interrogation; although he could hear the answers quite clearly, he was no longer listening. The Lady had turned away, uninterested in the interrogation process. In the meantime, she’d begun hauling up the bodies and laying them out in neat rows with a methodical calm that was frightening in its inhumanity.

Little was known about the Lady, other than that she had begun appearing in the news nearly five years ago, a night-time vigilante who kept to the shadows, walked her own way, and intervened when and where she felt like it. She’d laid a claim to Metropolis, north of Gotham, and policed the city she thought of as ‘hers’ as much as Crusader thought of this city as ‘his’.

She was, however, considerably less territorial about it. Kal had flown in her city before and she had welcomed his help. Perhaps a subtle difference between male and female ego?

There were moments when her actions had stunned her team-mates, so coldly rational as they were. This was one of them. In such a manner had Kal seen the dead laid out after battle. Yet these men were not dead - some stirred briefly, only to fall back into the safer somnolence of unconsciousness.

One man stirred more definitely, and without a word, she strode into the darkness, her figure almost vanishing even to Kal’s sharp gaze. There was a groan, swiftly interrupted with a sigh and the thump of his head falling back to the pavement.

Kal winced.

“Lady--” Crusader’s voice cut through the sound of the sirens growing louder.

“I knocked him out again,” her rich, resonant voice spoke from the shadows. “A mere tap behind the ear. He will awaken sore, but none the worse for his experience. You should learn trust.”

It seemed the other man had finished with the interrogation, for the informer was now bound and still, too terrified of the woman who stalked out of the darkness, her tall lean form lacking only a set of huge batlike wings to complete her menace.

Crusader was unthreatened by her ferocity, for all that she stood of a height with him and far stronger than he. “You should learn boundaries.”

“Do you wish us gone before the police department arrives?” Kal inquired, interrupting them before trouble could truly brew. He felt no desire to leave the scene - in truth, he felt he should see this out. However, his respect for Crusader extended to the man’s sensibilities. And it would reinforce Crusader’s standing among Gotham’s Police Department to be the only one seen with the fallen thugs, even if it was subconsciously known that his team-mates had assisted him in this matter.

Crusader regarded him, the cynicism plain, for all that there was no way to see the man’s eyes through the lenses of his cowl. “What do you think?”

The Lady’s laugh rippled out through the night, audible beneath the piercing wail of the police sirens, now at the end of the street in question. “Fight well, then, Crusader. And good night to you.”

With one swift, vertical leap, she vanished into the sky, the silvery coil of her lariat nothing more than a flash in the darkness.

Kal regarded Crusader for one more moment, meeting the opaquely dark gaze. Then with no effort at all, he lifted from the ground, following the Lady into the air. Several hundred yards up, he found her sitting astride a gargoyle leaning her cheek along the carved creature’s head between the ear and a row of spines on its skull and smiling to herself.

“He didn’t thank us.”

Her mouth curved deeper. “You said he would not.” One leg swung over the edge of the gargoyle and she perched on the gargoyle’s back, at home so far above the solidity of the ground. At her hip, her lasso gleamed in the reflected light over Gotham city, briefly drawing his eye to her leg, before he looked beyond to the street below.

“So I did.” Kal regarded the goings-on, far beneath them. “Did he get the answers he was seeking from those men?”

“You were standing closer,” she chided, “and your hearing is better than mine. You should know.”

“I could not distinguish most what the man was saying,” Kal admitted, unabashed by her reproof. “It made no sense to me. Doubtless it made sense to him.”

“Doubtless.”

He regarded her as she glanced down at the tableau below, the caped-and-costumed figure distinct amidst the blue uniforms of the GCPD as they collected the remainder of the men from this evening. “You never did say what you were doing in Gotham in the first place.”

She smiled, “And you never did ask.”

Not that she would tell him if he asked. Crusader kept his secrets close, but sometimes Kal suspected the Lady kept hers closer. If Crusader had ever determined her origins, he had never revealed them to anyone else. And for all that Kal could look and see the face behind the mask, he respected her privacy and her choice. If she chose to speak of her true self, then she would tell him. He could be patient and wait.

“I am minded to stay and wait for his haranguing,” she said at last. A sly smile hovered on her lips. “But my own city calls me and I cannot abandon her longer.” She smiled. “Will you remain to be told off for poaching on his territory like a possessive tom on his home ground?”

When she put it like that, “No.”

Her laughter rippled around him, powerfully attractive. For all that Lois Lane was a beautiful, challenging woman, Kal could not deny that something in him was drawn to his team-mate - to the shadows of her mind and her soul, and the secrets of her life.

However, she neither invited him in word, nor encouraged him in look or deed. Her interactions with him and the rest of the League were purely functional, absently affectionate in the way of comrades of war, but without the personal edge that Kal had seen in the others of human background.

He put his thoughts aside as she spoke again, pushing herself off the gargoyle and floating away through the empty air. “I’ll see you at the next League gathering, Kal.”

“Indeed, Lady.”

And in a moment, the space she had inhabited was nothing more than a vacuum into which the air flowed, and she was nothing but a fast-diminishing speck on the Gotham skyline.


	4. Lady Night

Diana Prinze hovered over the city she thought of as her own.

The skyscrapers gleamed by the rays of the setting half-moon, their blue glass silvered in the light, and she hovered between them, nearly motionless to the naked eye, and surveyed her city.

 _Her_ city.

She thought of it no less possessively than Crusader thought of Gotham, although she was less territorial about it. _Boundaries, my foot!_ Yes, Diana much preferred the proud beauty of Metropolis to Gotham’s antique architecture: a question of taste, no doubt - but then, most things were.

As the last rays of moonlight poured over her, the reflected sunlight rebuilt the strength she’d used this evening, both at the charity function and in the alleyway. Pouring her energy so totally into the otherself had been dangerous for even that short time. Usually, she retained enough connection between the self and the otherself she created to continue breathing; this time, urgency had required her to draw upon her being so completely that respiration had halted, resulting in the good doctor’s attempt to resuscitate her.

Dr. Wayne’s attempt had been kindly meant, although he had been unaware of the nature of her physiology, assuming her to be human.

Diana Prinze was no more human than the Martian Manhunter.

She had learned to be human, brought up by humans, taught their language, and shown their ways. Her adopted parents had been wealthy beyond imagining, a once-proud house of a European dynasty, but the traditions of obligation and responsibility to the less fortunate had been passed down through that dynasty until it came to the childless couple.

Ari and Lyta Prinze had taught that code of honour to a girl whose strength and abilities could have made her a tyrant to breathe terror into the hearts of governments everywhere. As she looked at the world around her, Diana could well conceive this world under her command: no law but her own, no will but her own, no rule but her own.

Thankfully, for her own sake as well as the world’s, such a scenario had not come to pass. At least, not as many feared it might.

In a way, Metropolis was ‘her’ city. She imposed her will over it, but followed the laws of the land. She did not act the goddess, claiming the right to judge good and evil; but she did what she did to make this city safer for the innocents who lived in it.

In the same way, Diana claimed the whole Earth as her own. She had been protector and champion as required, and was proud to be counted among the ‘Earthlings’ for all that her lineage came from another planet in another solar system. Until Kal arrived, there had been no one hero to challenge her physically, although Green Lantern might come closest, and Crusader would be a dangerous opponent.

She breathed deeply as the setting moon’s last rays washed over her, and caught a hint of the dawn on the wind, mere hours away. The night was nearly past. There was a little time to return to her apartment and rest a while, before the dawn came upon her and she rose to make the most of the sunlight hours.

Besides, she thought as she flew for her apartment complex. Anne-Marie would have woken from her evening nap and would be waiting for her return. She might even have news of tonight’s function and the outcome of it.

Diana’s life as a socialite was insipid, in too many ways. It was the way of life she learned from her mother, and while it could be a life of value when the cause was good, it was not enough to fully occupy her time. Yet she had established herself as Diana Prinze, and there was no escaping that persona, for all that her soul chafed against the constraints of the personality she had assigned it.

There were times when she envied Kal’s unity of being. He had no questions of who he was or his mission; he held the purity of his beliefs and retained the innocence of his people’s isolation from the rest of the world. And when duty called, he had no need of excuses to leap into the fray.

Still, her disguise as the Lady Diana Prinze was effective for its purpose. She was not Kal, sprung from a race of warriors out of nowhere, heir to a tradition of honour and protection that was old when the Ancient Egyptians were building their pyramids in Giza. She had been sent to Earth as a refugee, supplicant of a planet that had long since burned to dust and ashes.

Diana was not human, but she had lived as such - more or less - until she was eighteen. That gave her advantages over Kal in understanding the way human minds worked. More than he, she comprehended Crusader’s paranoia, Green Lantern’s military dedication, Flash’s suggestive teasing. Diana knew how to ease the fear she saw in the faces of so many, how to deflect the worship in others - still things of which Kal had to learn.

And a part of her was glad she had ‘someone else’ behind which to hide when the crowds clamoured for their heroes.

Nobody would associate the cool efficiency of Lady Night with the fluttering, sex-kittenish Diana Prinze whose ‘toil not, neither do I spin’ attitude earned her the envy and scorn of those less fortunate, whose weakness was men, and whose flirtatious ways were legendary. And in that persona, she earned herself a little peace and a little influence among the common people.

She was halfway across the city when her commlink beeped. She didn’t even check to see who it was; there was only one person on the face of the planet that would call her on this device at this hour.

“Crusader.”

“Lady.” His voice was gravel and velvet, hiding the cold steel soul beneath. It seemed that, for all the success of the night, Crusader was not a happy camper at all.

“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. Her team-mate had already been well-established in Gotham City when she first arrived in Metropolis as the Lady Diana Prinze. Their paths had crossed within a matter of weeks, and a wary alliance had been formed through the years. But they struck sparks off each other as flint to steel, strong personalities that inevitably clashed.

“I told you--”

“To stay out of your city,” she returned calmly. “Yes. You have repeated it more than once tonight and I am well-informed of the transgression. However, I was in the vicinity when the gunfire broke out, and you were not to be found.”

She had been surprised at Crusader’s absence when the thugs broke into the ballroom. Expecting his presence, she had remained still and quiescent, playing the terrified socialite until she realised he must be elsewhere, that these men had chosen their time and target well. _Then_ necessity had required the otherself.

“And the second time?”

“We were there, Superman and I,” she said simply. “Were we to leave a team-mate to battle such forces on his own?”

“I could have managed.”

“Of that we have no doubt. However we have a vested interest in the well-being of your city as much as we have vested in you - or you have in Gotham. And I do not doubt that Kal welcomed the chance to vent his spleen on the men who made him powerless before.” A gust of wind whipped around her, tugging at her lariat, pulling at the strands that escaped the coil into which she had wound her hair. “Do you have any further dressing-down to give me? It is late, and we cannot all lie abed come morning.”

He snorted at the way she implied she knew his identity. It was a game between them, this attempt to draw each other into the open, to seek out each other’s secrets. As yet, there was no winner; Diana was sure of it.

“Very well, Lady. But in future, remember whose city is Gotham.”

“As if you would give me the opportunity to forget,” she answered, easily. Possessive and unyielding and quite masculinely pig-headed, her team-mate was both well-respected in her sights, and a cause for great exasperation. It had always been so between them. “Good night, Crusader. Sleep well.”

“And you, Lady.”

At least he was not beyond politeness. Diana switched off the commlink with a flick of her thumb and headed for her penthouse apartment in a luxury complex. J’onn would telepathically contact her if she was required for League business; he knew all her secrets, and she was glad enough that at least one of her team-mates knew who she was should the time come to it.

As she landed behind a screen of bushes on the penthouse balcony, she observed the lights in the apartment. Anne-Marie, it seemed, was up this evening, and waiting for her mistress.

Her aide and personal maid glanced up from the desk where she was sorting through papers. The middle-aged woman slept in four-hour blocks through the day and the night - during hours where Diana could fend for herself. Anne-Marie Kaleffska had served Diana’s parents for many years, and when the daughter of her employers had chosen to immigrate to America, she had faithfully followed her charge.

“I hear you had a busy evening.”

“Just a little. Most of it in Gotham.”

“The news was all over it. I received a call from the Daily Planet’s gossip column.”

Diana laughed as she pulled the mask from her head. “What did you expect?”

“A little sense,” Anne-Marie returned, shuffing papers into neater piles. “You were not yet back from the function - what could I possibly have to tell them that they could not find out for themselves from the news?” She regarded the young woman critically. “I saw both the otherself and heard that Dr. Wayne had to perform resuscitation on you. You drained too much into the otherself?”

“There were too many of them,” she answered, feeling defensive before the barrage of questions. “I needed more strength to deal with the thugs.”

Pale brows drew together in a frown. “You used to know the exact strength that you could leave behind to keep your body breathing. Lately, you have misjudged more than once. Did that mother of yours leave any information about Themiscyran hormonal changes in the early twenties?” As swiftly as the question was asked, it was waved away. “No, answer later. I’ll wager my salary you didn’t eat anything at that function of yours - too busy flitting around playing the socialite. I’ll prepare you some food while you wash.”

Diana’s mouth twitched, “Am I permitted to ask how much we made at the function tonight?”

“You are,” Anne-Marie said without a smile. “The contribution from Dr. Wayne got us over the two hundred mark. You must have pricked his pride well.” She glanced up, eyeing Diana sharply. “Go! Wash!”

Thus ordered, Diana submitted.

Her costume peeled from her skin as she shimmied out of it and the bathroom filled with steam. Beneath it, her skin was smooth, unblemished, her figure slender and well-curved, but also muscular. The Themiscyrans had been a warrior race of women, warriors birthing more warriors while their menfolk held the house. Diana’s body reflected a thousand generations of women trained in the art of war, and war they had made upon each other , tribe to tribe, until their world could stand it no longer and destruction took them.

She, alone of all of her people, had been sent to safety. She, alone of all her people, had found life on another planet, a home in another people, a purpose in another mission.

But at the time her tiny vessel crashed to Earth in the high reaches of the Swiss Alps, the suspicion regarding aliens and alien types had been strong, and so her parents had quietly adopted the ‘foundling’ who looked human enough and yet was not.

Water poured over her body and she scrubbed herself down with the loofah and shower gel and rinsed through her hair. As she did so, she considered the matter of her secret identity and the trouble it had lately caused - not just tonight’s difficulty with Dr. Wayne, but other, more disquieting rumbles.

Of late, Crusader had become more intent on discovering her origins and other identity. Given his investigative nature, he’d be most interested in her ability to create the ‘second self.’ While she might trust him to guard her back in battle, she was not so sure she trusted him to resist his curiosity regarding her powers. And she had no desire to become his guinea-pig, experimented on to see what she could withstand.

The pressure of impending revelation of her identity had prompted her to find some leverage by which she could balance out the power struggle. And the only thing of which she had hopes was Crusader’s private identity.

While she did not personally care who Crusader was in his ‘other life’, her own concern and caution required her to have something to balance out anything he might discover of her.

It had been in her mind for some time that Crusader had to be someone living in Gotham. As such, she had gently pressed her charity organisations to take a greater interest in Gotham’s well-to-do society - such as the charity ball this evening. However, a charity function or two would not give her the inside information she required to determine who was her team-mate. After tonight, perhaps she should work at cultivating a friendship with Dr. Wayne or his partner, Ms. Lane.

She considered that thought a moment or two. It seemed doubtful that Ms. Lane would suffer Diana’s alter-ego - women tended to be less sympathetic to their own kind, but Dr. Wayne had been a little more forthcoming. Perhaps not the clueiest of males, but Diana was well aware of her abilities to draw out even the most reserved of men.

It would be worth a try, anyway.

Who knew? She would have fun, and it was possible that Dr. Wayne might even enjoy the drawing-out!

When she emerged from her room in a terry-towelling bathrobe, Anne-Marie already had a steaming hot dish of angel-hair pasta in a tomato marinara sauce laid out on the table, complete with fine china, silver cutlery, and napkin. No instant dinners for _her_ charge! “No sign of Crusader?” Anne-Marie inquired, picking up the conversation again.

“None at the function,” Diana reported as she sat down. “Although I got told off for imposing on his territory later.”

Anne-Marie snorted as she poured a glass of water. “Males! Sheer egotistical stupidity.”

Diana laughed. “They say they’re good for some things,” she teased her aide before taking another mouthful of pasta.

“I’ll grant you that. But that one - pah! Even the crusaders for the holy land slept with any willing woman - and doubtless some not so willing - on their way to seek the cross!” Anne-Marie grimaced. “That one is all work, no pleasure at all.”

Diana tried to imagine the too-intense Crusader pursuing a woman, and laughed at the image it produced in her imagination. Still, his dedication was admirable - especially in one who had no claim to especial powers or abilities the way the rest of their team-mates did.

“And I am all pleasure and no work - or so the gossips say,” Diana pointed out, twirling more pasta onto her fork. “That does not make them right. He thinks of the city as his own.”

“And treats it as possessively as a man treats his trophy wife,” the aide snorted, now back at her desk and filing papers. “If the man has a wife, I pity her! To come second to a city...?”

“It would not be the first time a woman came second in a man’s affections behind his work.”

“You would not settle for it.”

“I am not just any woman,” Diana admitted. “Besides, any man would come second to my own responsibilities to the Earth, Metropolis, and the Justice League.”

The aide’s expression developed a wry look. “Many men would happily come second to all those if it meant sharing the night with you, Diana.”

“And even in that they would be disappointed,” Diana said firmly. Anne-Marie was an excellent aide to both the socialite and Lady Night, but for the habit she had of attempting to pair off her charge. It was probably partly at the behest of Diana’s mother, who tended to call and ask about both Diana’s night-time heroics and her night-time activities. Inevitably, there was much to speak of the first and nothing to speak of the second. “It is - what? Four in the morning? Not exactly the time every man dreams his wife will come home.”

The older woman shut the final drawer and locked it neatly. “Then find a man who is not every man.”

Diana sighed and changed the topic. Crudely and abruptly, but all she could do. “Would you schedule a medical check-up with Dr. Trevor, Anne-Marie? In the next couple of days, please.”

“Dr. Wayne’s insistence?” Anne-Marie smirked. “I heard he was working on you while you were dissociated.”

“He was,” Diana said. “And, before you ask, he wasn’t kissing me.” The words were firm; across the room, hazel eyes had taken a wicked glint to them. It didn’t help that she quite clearly remembered that one second of Dr. Wayne’s mouth against hers, never mind how impersonal and businesslike the contact had been. “He wanted me to go with the medics,” she said, “I refused on the grounds that I was fine, of course.”

“You are due for a session with Dr. Trevor shortly anyway.”

“Yes. And I tired easily for the rest of the evening,” Diana admitted, recalling the faint feeling of being drained that she had suffered through the remainder of the night.

“Then eat and do not talk.”

Diana meekly ate.

She was so tired, she submitted to having an appointment made, and being reminded to contact her mother tomorrow. She submitted to finishing all the food, even though she wasn’t that hungry, and being shooed off from the charity’s paperwork.

She even submitted to being chivvied off to bed.

Anne-Marie had the soul of a bully.

She was nearly to bed when she remembered her plan to develop further contact with Dr. Wayne. Nothing terribly intimate, the man was a workaholic, from all accounts. She would merely draw him out a little, inquire about his clientele, flatter his ego, and get the information she wanted. He might have some valuable insights into Gotham’s society.

Yes, tomorrow she would ask Anne-Marie about looking into Dr. Wayne’s social habits.

Tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It started off simple enough:
> 
> Diana becomes Batman, Bruce becomes Superman, and Clark becomes Wonder Woman. Lifestyle, background, and masks. Simple, really.
> 
> Unfortunately, life is not so accommodating. You really, really, really can’t take Bruce out of his city and lighten him up. It rips apart most of whom he is. I had to settle for making him not-quite-so-dark but still very focused and driven: a crusader. His being a doctor was easier to justify, as the story shows - and I think it fits with his personality. He’s going to be driven no matter what happened in his past.
> 
> It was relatively easy to swap Clark and Diana’s background stories and their outlooks, although long-time fans of the characters will have serious difficulties imagining anyone but Superman in charge of Metropolis. I still have to think twice about it. Clark fits quite easily into the “Wonder Woman” mythos with an Atlantean twist, and his personality is reflective enough of our version of Wonder Woman that writing him was easy.
> 
> But how, exactly, is one supposed to turn Diana into a Batman-equivalent, all shadows, darkness, and angst? I guess the answer is that you don’t. She acquired a darker side, along with a wicked sense of humour, but the ‘playgirl by day, vigilante by night’ is wholly from our understanding of Batman. The ‘otherself’ projection was my way of getting her to be in two places at once without holographic projectors or sidekicks to play doubles.
> 
> I don’t know if there’s going to be a sequel yet. It’s a nice thought, but there are several other projects still on the boil. However, this idea grabbed me and held on through 12,500 words - quite shocking.


End file.
